Chapel of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows

Protected as a monument by MB of 03.06.2005. Diagonally located on the corner with the former so-called Meuleweg, the access road to the Van Hauwermeirsmolen (no. 64) and the former Hof Van Hauwermeir or the miller's court (now in ruins). Wayside chapel dedicated to Our Lady or Mary Mother of Sorrows and historically related to the adjacent site of the Van Hauweirs mill, a watermill operated by the Van Hauwoir family since the beginning of the 19th century. A framed memorial hung in the chapel states that the chapel was built in 1886. Cadastral registered in 1887 as a new chapel, owned by the heirs of farmer Felicien Van Hauwermeir. According to the notes of Father De Somer in the Liber Memorialis, the chapel was built by the widow of Felicia and Van Hauwermeir in honor of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows. The plan for the chapel is said to have belonged to her son August.
Chapel of the road, in keeping with a common type from the second half of the 19th century, characterized as sober rural brick architecture with simple neo-Gothic formal elements. Chapel on rectangular plan with triangular closure, built of brick and painted white on a black-painted plinth. Façade corners marked by lisenes. Covering half hipped roof covered with black slates. Front gable with steep and high top set on high shoulder pieces supported by a natural stone profiled corbel. Protruding bands frame the façade; At the top, the masonry of these bands runs parallel to the sloping sides of the top. Wide rectangular door under recessed pointed arched field with painted inscription: "MARY MOTHER OF SORROWS". Blue painted wooden wing door. Two large glazed doorlights with wrought iron grilles with circular motifs and a cross in the centre. In both side walls a pointed arched window with wrought iron latticework. Side and rear elevations surmounted by a flat mouse-tooth frieze and a profiled cornice.
Recently refreshed interior covered with a neo-Gothic, pointed wooden barrel vault. Walls covered with white painted wooden slats. Small square flamed grey floor tiles. White-painted altar with ditto altar table resting on two columns, standing on a low black painted wooden stage. On the higher, rear part of the altar: large polychrome Pieta statue above the altar in the choir (supplied in 1888 by the neo-Gothic art studio Bressers-Blanchaert, Ghent). Against the side walls on the altar stage: two high black lacquered consoles, edged with gold, each with a polychrome statue of angel on top. Furthermore, a bust of Saint Theresa, two green painted wooden wall consoles, edged with gold; small statues of saints: Saint Anthony, Father Damien, Brother Isidore, Saint Bernadette.

Stichting Open Kerken